Tabletop Simulator Review: Tabletop Till You Drop!

One quick glimpse at the title of the game and you could easily conclude that this is yet another cash grab simulator and you would be terribly wrong. Tabletop Simulator is actually a simulation for all kinds of tabletop games.

Really, there’s no limit for what card, board, strategy, trading card, role-playing or original tabletop games you decide to play with up to seven other online players. You’ll have a tutorial to teach you the controls, but for the most part, it’s really about what game you’ve decided to play privately or publicly with online buddies and whether or not you choose to follow the rules of the game that you are playing.

Your satisfaction level out of this game depends on whether or not you enjoy any type of tabletop gameplay. If the answer is yes, this game does an incredible job of allowing you to relive your childhood memories or try something new that you haven’t experienced before…or you can ignore the Steam Workshop and settle in for some more historical tabletop gaming like checkers or poker.

You’ll have several ways of customizing your session, from player privileges to visuals and even the physics in your game. If you want to add-on to the game’s rules or just the game itself, you can pull up a chest that contains various nick-knacks to go with whatever game you wish to play. If you are playing a complex dungeon crawler, one of the chest items is a tablet that can be used to Google the instructions…or watch YouTube videos.

If you ever want to write any information down, you can use a notepad from in-game or the main menu screen. If you have that creative itch and wish to design your own tabletop game, you can create your own game and set of rules with a complex depth of options, so long as you can deal with the fact that images cannot be uploaded straight from your computer, only out of a web url link.

Crafting a fun game is definitely more time-consuming than playing them, but it will all pay off in the end when you have uploaded something in the Steam Workshop that other tabletop enthusiasts could compete or cooperate on.

Unlike most simulator games, the physics in Tabletop Simulator complement the games you play, and in the few instances where I did notice some weird physics hiccups, I was laughing rather than getting annoyed, because I was having a good time. There are a couple of things to pick at. The framerate drops whenever you are holding a specific number of objects or playing a board game that contains a lot of game pieces laying out on the board.

Outside of a few technical bugs and the usual online trolls that you could run into if you don’t make any restrictions, there’s really not a whole lot of wrong to be had with Tabletop Simulator. I was having a great time, playing my childhood games and ones that I have never experienced before with other players around the world.

Really, having a great time is something you’d want out of playing video games, or any type of tabletop gaming. If you are looking to play your favorite tabletop games with online friends and players, Tabletop Simulator, for $19.99, is recommended. Oh and you can flip tables for some reason.